


Turning Points

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Category: The Voice RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Adam were an introspective man, he might pinpoint the night that Amanda and Melanie are kicked off of season three as the most important night of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Points

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ullman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ullman/gifts).



> This was written for Yuletide 2012 for ullman. Thank you for loving _The Voice_ as much as I do, and for the wonderful prompt. I hope you enjoy this. Happy Holidays!

If Adam were an introspective man, there’d be a few moments that he could pinpoint, turning point moments, moments that he could point to and say, “yes, fuck, yes, that was the moment when everything changed.” Moments he’d never be able to shake.

The first would be the first time he touched a guitar. His eight-year-old fingers were too small to really hold down the strings, but his mother had been desperate for a moment alone and a way for him to expend some of his excessive energy, that she insisted on packing him off to guitar lessons two afternoons a week anyway. His teacher had done a tour with _The Eagles_ , and Adam would spend hours listening to the old guy reminisce about motel rooms in Arkansas and crowds in Ohio. The whole thing sounded exhilarating, and Adam promised himself that, someday, he’d have these stories to tell, too.

The second would be a Saturday afternoon in February. Adam’s freshman year. The air was a little nippy, even in LA, as the star quarterback pressed Adam up against the bleachers, not an hour after winning the first, and last, homecoming game that Adam ever attended.

Third would be the first time he played with Maroon 5, in a dingy little rented studio in the Bronx that smelled of mildew and rat poison and promise.

Fourth would be sitting in the conference room at A&M, signing their first record deal. The fifth came almost immediately after, when their new manager held Adam back as his band mates went in search of champagne. Adam remembers thinking how big the conference room suddenly looked, executives in suits standing cross-armed behind his manager as the man explained to him how damaging it was to have a front man of a hip-hop style boy band who was caught with another man. There was a slideshow, full of images of young men who almost made it big, caught in a bathhouse or dancing in tight sparkly jeans at a club or with their dick out in a back alley. It was meant to be terrifying, and it was. 

Even if Adam were an introspective man, he’d probably never admit that the sixth was the minute he was introduced to Blake Shelton at _The Voice’s_ first meet-and-greet cocktail party.

It wouldn’t matter, though, because that moment leads to the seventh, the night that Amanda and Melanie are kicked off of season three, the night when none of those other moments seem to matter so much anymore.

***

Looking over at Blake, with his expectant look, half-lidded eyes, and pouting lips, Adam sighs. Being Blake’s friend is exhausting

“Please?”

Adam shakes his head. “I’m really tired.”

“Bullshit. You just don’t like to lose.”

Adam has to admit that his reticence does have more to do with wanting to head home and lick his wounds in private, rather than any real exhaustion, but it’s a long season and he _is_ tired and he feels a lot like it’s his fault that both Amanda _and_ Melanie left this evening. Christina keeps giving him these pitying little looks, as if this is a loss they can bond over or some shit, and then she’s right in front of him, smiling and resting her hand on his arm in what she probably thinks is a comforting gesture.

“Matt just invested in _The Blue Whale_. Free drinks ‘til midnight. Everyone’s coming.” And then Christina’s moving on to cajole Cee Lo into coming, too, and Adam knows that his night is shot. 

Adam glances at Blake and, yep, he’s fucked. Christina is always the forcefully supportive girlfriend, and they all tend to get wrapped into participating in whatever Matt’s latest endeavor is. Blake shrugs, holding up his car keys. “I’ll drive.”

Adam doesn’t argue as they head for Blake’s truck. He has to pull himself into it, and then he settles in with a loud sigh, fiddling with the dials on the radio. “One More Night” comes on, and Adam feels Blake’s hand on his, keeping the station. Adam sighs, sitting back in his chair and crossing his legs.

Blake laughs and digs in his back pocket, pulling his phone out and tossing it at Adam. “Do me a favor? Buy Terry and Cassadee’s songs a few times from iTunes. I don’t want Cee Lo winning this.”

Adam glares. “Fuck, I hate losing.” He starts flipping through Blake’s phone, anyway. 

***

“Amanda and Melanie? They’re going to be fine.”

Christina’s looking honestly apologetic and Adam’s feeling a lot more generous now that he’s had a few beers. “Yeah.”

“They’ll get signed. They’re good.”

“Unique,” Adam adds, nodding. He finishes off his beer and leans forward. “It’s not them I’m worried about.”

Christina laughs. “You’ll be fine, too.”

“Mmm,” Adam shrugs noncommittally. He glances around them. _The Blue Whale_ is crowded, mostly with the show’s crew, but, still, they’re dancing and drinking and the DJ’s pretty good. He fixates on Blake and Terry for a moment. They’re bobbing their heads to a Rolling Stones tune, beer sloshing down their hands as they laugh together. Adam frowns, turning back to Christina. “It’s nice in here.”

She shrugs. “Matt’s fixing it up. Trying to get a better crowd.” Adam raises an eyebrow and she laughs, clear and jingling and Adam thinks, for a moment, that he’s going to miss her next season. “He’s trying,” she emphasizes the _trying_ and Adam reaches over to steal a sip of her drink. It’s fruity and sweet and he pretends to make a face at it. She shakes her head. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

She grins, but motions at the bar, and a moment later there’s a young waiter, dressed in a tight black shirt and skin-tight jeans placing two beers on the table. Christina hands him a $20 and he winks at Adam before walking away, making sure to swish his ass a little. Adam’s too drunk not to watch for the slightest instant.

“Adam-”

Fuck. “How do you do it?” Adam blurts before she can ask something that he is in no way prepared to answer.

She stops, frowning around whatever she was going to say. “Do what?” she asks instead.

“This thing.” He motions all around them, then clarifies, “With Matt.”

She narrows her eyes. “I like him. He’s fun. He makes me laugh. And he’s good with Max.” 

“You seem happy.”

Her gaze softens. “I am. Adam,” her voice is gentle, as if worried that she might startle him. “What happened with Anne?”

The question still stings, but more so because of reminded failure than anything else. The whole disaster seems so long ago now, Anne screaming at him in his living room, telling him that he’s distant, that he’ll never love anyone, that he doesn’t know a good thing when he sees it. Every word had rung true, and he had taken it, sitting on the ottoman and nodding until she ran out of steam and slammed his door. Gone. Forever. He can only muster the smallest bit of regret, mostly for hurting her, not any of the other stuff that he should be sad he lost but is actually just relieved is gone.

He takes a long swig of his beer, the alcohol going straight to his head. “It didn’t work. She wanted more.”

He can’t decide if Christina looks pitying or understanding and all she says is, “Yeah,” unhelpfully.

It’s enough to make Adam scream, all this innuendo and all these hints she’s been dropping all season, as if she knows something, a secret, and she wants him in on it, but only if he can figure it out for himself. Fuck that. “If you have something to say, just say it.”

She pauses, eyeing him for a moment, then she puts her beer down and scoots closer. “It’s not my place, but, you know me and that doesn’t hold me back, so-” She shrugs. “You should go for it.”

“What?” Adam asks, almost on reflex, and then, when Christina nods towards the dance floor where Trevin has joined Blake and Terry, he remembers to maintain plausible deniability. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Christina pats his knee and, this time, her look is definitely pitying. “I think you do.”

He takes a sip of his beer. She shakes her head, finishes her own beer, then kisses his cheek, her breath smelling of Vodka and oranges and Guinness as she whispers in his ear, “He won’t turn you down.” And then she’s gone, back to the bar where she grabs another drink and Matt and takes it all with her to the dance floor.

His eyes track back to Blake, who’s now pressed too close to Terry’s backside, because Terry is engrossed in Trevin as Trevin sings along with the R&B hit thrumming through the speakers. Blake tries a little shimmy with his hips, but he’s drunk and he’s never been good at moves like that, anyway, so he reaches out a steadying hand on Terry’s hip. Adam squirms in his seat. 

It’s too much, all of a sudden. Christina’s words running on repeat, over and over, emblazoned on the back of his eyelids; the music thumping under the dance floor and electrifying his body, energy pooling uncomfortably in his dick; Blake’s fingers grasping at bare skin between Terry’s jeans and his t-shirt and, fuck, Adam slams his fist on the table, forgetting that he’s still grasping a half-empty beer bottle. The glass shatters, the beer going everywhere. He swears, long and high, and then Amanda is there, with a wad of napkins to clean up the mess before pulling Adam towards the back.

“This is the woman’s room,” he tries to protest, but his hand is stinging and his head feels fuzzy and she’s strangely much stronger than him. “Amazon woman,” he mutters, but she just laughs and shoves his hand under the sink. It stings and he tries to jerk away, but she has him boxed against the sink with her body. It’s pointless and he stops fighting, his whole body going limp and shaky as she turns off the water and pulls his hand towards her.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “About tonight.”

She doesn’t look up from his hand, where she’s poking around a little less gently than she could be, ostensibly looking for glass shards.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, because he doesn't know what else to say and, well, maybe she hadn’t heard him the first time. She responds by pressing against the line of his cut and he pulls his hand away, swearing. “Jesus, fuck, that hurts.”

“There’s still some glass in there,” she explains, as if he hadn’t gotten that from the pain, but when she holds out her palm he reluctantly puts his hand back in it. She glances at him, and it’s the only warning he gets before there’s a searing pain and a flash of heat that strikes his hand and moves up his arm ‘til his whole body is sticky with sweat. She grabs a wad of paper towels and presses it tightly against his palm. “I think I got it all.”

Adam’s feeling a little woozy as he leans his hip against the sink and closes his eyes. Amanda increases the pressure against the wound and, slowly, he goes back to drunk-fuzzy rather than loss-of-blood fuzzy. Finally, he opens his eyes and, when the world only starts to tilt a little bit, he looks up at Amanda.

“Thank you.”

“I owe you, coach.” He frowns and lilts and she grabs his elbow with her free hand, smiling gently. “I’ve never seen you like this. Out of control. Usually this is Blake’s thing.”

“Blake?” It’s out before Adam can stop it, sounding more like a whimper than Blake’s name and then he adds, “Fuck,” just in case he wasn’t in enough trouble already.

Amanda frowns. “Is he what you were talking with Christina about? You looked really upset when she left the table.”

“Yes. No.” Adam wants to run his hand across his forehead, but Amanda has it tightly in hers, so he settles on staring at it. “I don’t know.”

“You know none of us would care, right?”

She looks so gentle, so soft, and Adam feels his head rush again and he reaches his free hand out to hold himself against the sink.

“You don’t, do you?” She sounds so surprised, so shocked, and both her hands tighten around him. “Jesus, Adam.”

“What?” He asks because, fuck, he really doesn't know what she’s talking about and he’s drunk and his hand is pulsing and oozing blood and he hasn’t felt this out of control since he was fifteen. “I don’t- My hand- I-”

Amanda shushes him, then pulls the paper towels away and pokes around a little bit at his palm. “The bleeding’s slowing down. Just a little longer.”

She grabs a new bunch of paper towels and presses them back against his palm. He stares at her fingers. “I really am sorry.”

She shakes her head. “Not your fault. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m gonna get my own deal.”

Adam nods. “Cee Lo already said he’s gonna fight me for you.”

She grins. “Nothing new then, huh?”

He laughs, but it makes his hand hurt, so he forces himself to stop mid-chuckle. “Hurts,” he admits, and she shakes her head.

“You’re an idiot.” But it sounds fond and she’s smiling, that same pitying smile that Christina was giving him earlier, and suddenly he wants to know why there seems to be some sort of grassroots lets-pity-Adam party that he hasn’t been invited to.

“What did you mean? When you said that none of you would care?”

She looks a little torn, but before she struggles through a response, the bathroom door bangs open. Cassadee is instantly at his side, peeling away the paper towel and making noises halfway between sympathetic and angry and, really, when did women on this show start caring for him so much?

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.” Her voice is steady, not quite gentle, as she pokes and prods and Adam flinches.

“Amanda already did that.”

“Yeah, well, Blake isn’t going to stop whining until I check you out for myself.” Adam looks at her, surprised, and she sighs, flickering her hair off her shoulder and giving his hand back to Amanda. “You’re both idiots, I swear. He’s just outside, pacing and whining about women’s restrooms and how you’re a menace to his sanity.” She offers a real, soft smile. “As if he has any sanity to save.”

Adam snorts and Amanda pulls on his hand. “Don’t move. I’m gonna put some band-aids on it until you can get home and put a real bandage on, okay?” She motions to her purse, forgotten on the edge of the sink, and Cassadee pulls out a handful of band-aids. 

Adam only has a moment to wonder at the depths of Amanda’s purse, before Cassadee’s fingers are on his chin, pulling his attention to her. Her other hand is on her hip, her expression fierce, eyes blazing into his as if to tell him not to move, as if he isn’t trapped between two of the fiercest women he’s ever met. It’s not worth fighting, so he nods at her to go on and she gives him a little, half-there smile.

“I’m only saying this because Blake’s been like a father to me and I’ve come to care about you, too. I want you both to be happy, and it seems like the only way that’s going to happen is for you to be together.”

“You have it wrong,” Adam protests, sirens going off in his head and in his hand, those images of rockstar dicks in alleys and pressed close in gay clubs burning across his mind.

But Cassadee just cuts him off with a huff. “I really don’t. I know how Blake feels about you, and from the way you look at him, I know you feel it, too. And, look, this isn’t really my business, but Blake’s on the other side of that door and he’s miserable and if this is what I have to do to kick some sense into the both of you? I’ll do it a hundred times over.”

Adam feels like he’s been caught, his skin too tight and hot and he knows he’s sweating, because he’s been so careful. So careful. And, now, because of a few words from Christina and a fucking beer bottle, his pretenses over the last fifteen years have been rendered completely fucking meaningless. And the worst part is? No one seems to care and he sort of feels like the one great Truth he’s had his entire adult like is coming down, brick-by-brick, around him. 

He hears the door close behind Cassadee, who hasn’t waited for a response, and desperately, he looks at Amanda, not knowing if he wants her to say yes or no or maybe nothing at all. She just shakes her head and gives him a knowing smile. “Don’t look at me. I agree with everything she said.” She finishes the last band-aid and lets go of his hand. “Fix it up when you get home, okay?”

“Yeah,” Adam agrees, nodding. He feels off-kilter without her touch, and he sways a little unsteadily. 

She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek, whispering, “And let him take care of you.” Adam turns his head to watch her walk away, and that’s when he sees Blake, standing in the doorway, arms crossed and looking furious and worried and anxious. Amanda rests a hand on his arms, leans in to whisper something that Adam can’t make out. Blake gives her a sharp nod and then they’re alone.

“The woman’s restroom?” Blake asks, looking around as if maybe someone’s hiding in one of the stalls, but, if Adam knows Amanda and Cassadee, they’re standing guard outside to maintain their privacy.

Adam shrugs, pain shooting through his arm to his hand, and makes a note not to do that anymore. “I lost a lot of blood. Didn’t know where Amanda was leading me.”

“You’re an idiot. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to play with glass?”

“Must have missed that day in kindergarten.”

“Figures.” And then Blake’s there, grabbing for Adam’s hand and smelling like cologne and grass and beer and Adam feels fuzzy and trapped all over again.

Blake runs his fingers over the band-aids, gentle and slow, but the wound is tender and raw and Adam pulls his hand away. “The girls took care of it.”

“Forgive me if I don’t trust _them_.”

“Forgive me if I don’t trust _you_.”

“Hey, I’ve taken care of hundreds of cuts and scrapes in my day. I live on a farm,” he says, as if that explains everything.

Adam groans. “Right, the farm.”

When Blake doesn’t immediately respond, Adam looks at him, surprised to see that Blake is staring, his eyes dark and his mouth twitching. Finally, Blake leans a hip against the sink, mirroring Adam’s stance, and murmurs, “You don’t look too good.”

“Lost a lot of blood,” he repeats.

“Idiot,” Blake repeats, but, this time, it sounds entirely different.

Adam’s skin is itching, his whole body thrumming, as if he knows this is it, here, the edge of something he’s been clinging to since he was eighteen. “I don’t know what-”

“Shh,” Blake shakes his head. “Don’t you ever stop talking?”

Adam scoffs. “Asshole.” Then Blake is there, his hand cupping Adam’s neck and his lips, chapped and warm and strong against Adam’s, and Adam lets out an embarrassing whine as he reaches up to meet him. It’s not a perfect kiss, what with the height difference and the pulsing in Adam’s useless hand and the fact that they’re in the fucking women’s restroom, but when Blake leans him against the sink and moves one hand to the back of Adam’s neck, it comes pretty damn close.


End file.
